Центр XL в Хартфорде: История и Настоящее Арены

Arena and convention center in Hartford, Connecticut

The Civic Center is the full time home of the Hartford Wolf Pack AHL hockey team and part time home of the University of Connecticut (UConn) men's and women's basketball teams and the UConn Huskies men's ice hockey team. Starting in the late 1990s, UConn men's basketball moved most of their important games—including the bulk of their Big East Conference games—to the Coliseum. During the 2011–2012 season, for instance, they played 11 home games at the Coliseum and only eight at their on campus facility, Gampel Pavilion. This practice continued when the Huskies joined the American Athletic Conference, successor to the original Big East, in 2013. The UConn men's hockey team uses the XL Center as its primary home as the newest men's member of Hockey East. It was the home of the New England/Hartford Whalers of the WHA and NHL from 1975 to 1978 and 1980 to 1997, and the Hartford Hellions of the MISL from 1980 to 1981, and the New England Blizzard of the ABL from 1996 to 1998, and hosted occasional Boston Celtics home games from 1975 to 1995. One of the most famous shots Larry Bird ever made, although it did not count, took place at the Hartford Civic Center: the shot from behind the backboard. It was the home of the Connecticut Coyotes and later the New England Sea Wolves of the Arena Football League. The arena seats 15,635 for ice hockey and 16,294 for basketball, 16,606 for center stage concerts, 16,282 for end stage concerts, and 8,239 for 3/4 end stage concerts, and contains 46 luxury suites and a 310 seat Coliseum Club, plus of arena floor space, enabling it to be used for trade shows and conventions in addition to concerts, circuses, ice shows, sporting events and other events. The graduation ceremonies of Central Connecticut State University and other local colleges are also held annually at the XL Center.

As originally built in 1975, it seated 10,507 for hockey, and served as the home of the then–New England Whalers for three years. In the early morning of January 18, 1978, the Civic Center's roof collapsed. Engineering analyses during litigation following the collapse indicated that compression members were overloaded through undersizing and underestimation of the probable loadings, and that lateral bracing of individual members was insufficient. "The roof did not fail due to the heavy snow that fell on that January night. According to the official City investigation, the roof began progressive failure as soon as it had been installed. Contributing factors included design errors, an underestimation of the weight of the roof, and differences between the design and the actual built structure." Investigations attributed the design issues to the unprecedented use of and trust in computer analysis. An absence of peer review for the novel structure and design process, and fragmentation of oversight responsibility during construction were also cited as contributing factors. Evidence showed that the roof had started to fail during construction, with bowed compression members. These distortions, and an unpredicted degree of deflection in the structure, were not investigated before the collapse. There were no injuries due to the collapse. The building was heavily renovated and re opened on January 17, 1980. The Arena hosted the Hartford Whalers from 1975 to 1997, when the team relocated to Raleigh to become the Carolina Hurricanes. In 1994, new owner Peter Karmanos pledged to keep the Whalers in Connecticut until 1998, unless they could not sell over 11,000 season tickets. After failed negotiations to build a new downtown arena for the Whalers with then governor John G. Rowland, on March 25, 1997, Karmanos announced that the team would leave. The New York Rangers franchise, looking to capitalize on Hartford as a potential market, placed its farm team there to become the Hartford Wolf Pack, starting in 1997. After a short stint as the Connecticut Whale, they reverted to the Wolf Pack moniker in 2013.

In September 2010, the arena was upgraded with a new center hung scoreboard with four Sony Jumbotrons and a state of the art sound system. The Connecticut State Legislature set aside $35 million in funding for improvements to the XL Center that began in early spring 2014 and completed in time for the start of the 2014–15 seasons of the Wolf Pack and UConn men's hockey in October. Improvements included upgrades to the mechanical system, locker rooms and concourse, replacing jumbotrons with a new HD video board, as well as aesthetic improvements such as a new bar area inside the arena and luxury seating in the lower bowl. A portion of the $35 million allocation went towards a study on the arena's long term viability; either more major renovations or replacing it with a new facility.

The XL Center serves as the second home for the University of Connecticut's men's and women's basketball programs. At the start of the 2014–15 season the UConn men's ice hockey program moved to the XL Center as a condition of its joining Hockey East. In September 2018, the UConn Board of Trustees approved a plan to build a new 2,500 seat arena with 500 seat backs in Storrs with the option to expand to 3,500 seats if necessary. Though Hockey East requires arenas to hold at least 4,000, UConn received a waiver for the project since the expectation is for the Huskies' men's hockey program to continue to play some of its games at the XL Center in Hartford. The target construction date is April 2021 with substantial completion wanted by October 2022. If everything stays on track, the arena would open in December 2022.

The Exhibition Center consists of a exhibit hall, a assembly hall that can divide into two meeting rooms, plus seven meeting rooms totaling and two lobbies totaling It is used for trade shows, conventions, banquets, meetings and other events. The surrounding shopping mall was torn down in 2004 and was replaced by street level retail shops and a 36 story residential tower named Hartford 21 which opened in 2006 and is the tallest residential tower between New York City and Boston.